'Brûl' is the second single off the new VENTILATEUR album ‘Rage De Vivre’ which will be released on February 28th 2025.
With tight, driving basslines and drums, a pitched guitar and a bridge that almost drowns in warm saxophone sound, this track best encapsulates the various inspirations for the album. With influences from newwave, post-punk and jazz, a sonic picture is formed in which energy and melody reinforce each other. In the bridge, the band experiments with a - rhythmically dense - own version of a bossa nova groove.
For this song, VENTILATEUR collaborates with saxophonist Nathan Daems. Daems, known from such projects as Black Flower and Trance Plantations, appears several times on the album with saxophone and kaval. With this single, his sound within 'Rage De Vivre' gets an introduction.
The music video for this track was made by Jonas Hollevoet and consists of a montage of images taken during the recording of the album at Studio Ledebergh in Ghent.
The artwork for the album and singles is provided by Theo Collie. Sharing the hometown of Bruges with the members of VENTILATEUR, Collie makes visual art by painting over old black and white pictures with vibrant colours. He has a great fascination for masks and costumes, which feature heavily in his work. This can also be seen in his work for the single cover art for For Better Days. Inspired by the music and the concepts of the album, he used his known methods and subjects to create several artworks specifically for Rage De Vivre.
'For Better Days', the first single of the new album, shows VENTILATEUR in their most postpunk form. For this song, the band worked together with singer Luca Missiaen (The Christian Club, Barno Koevoet & The Duijmschpijkers) to create a track full of energy and generational angst, yet hope for better times.
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VENTILATEUR is an instrumental project combining sounds from the vivid worlds of contemporary jazz and postpunk. The three-piece band, consisting of Iben Stalpaert on drums, Jasper Hollevoet on bass and Daan Soenens on guitar, uses angular rhythms and flowing melodies to construct compositions that embody both contrast and cohesion. Originally from Bruges, the band currently has Ghent as its homebase.
The trio released its self-titled debut EP on 22 March 2019. VENTILATEUR won awards at Fresh Fish, Red Rock Rally and Burgrock that same year and was one of the laureates of the then brand new Sound Track. Thanks to Sound Track 2020, the band received a residency at Het Entrepot in Bruges and a year of professional coaching from VI.BE and other national players in the music landscape.
In 2020, VENTILATEUR joined forces with young Ghent theatre collective Camping Sunset for the performance Happiness. The band composed the soundtrack for the play and also performed it live during the five-week run of the production. The music was subsequently recorded and released under the title A Soundtrack For Happiness at the Brussels label Sentimental.
In 2022, VENTILATEUR released its first full-length album with W.E.R.F. Records. 'Hoofdplaat', titled after the village near the manor house that served as its recording location, is the result of a long process of purification. VENTILATEUR presents the essence of their sound, stripped from all ballast.
VENTILATEUR balances on the border between the ‘niche’ world of instrumental jazz and the accessible world of the pop-rock circuit. From this position, the band aims to bring instrumental music to a wider audience. Apart from being purely intrinsically artistic, the trio's ambition is to excite a new audience for cultural participation and specifically the rich genre of jazz. Through their choice of accessibility within the experimental, the band aims to form a bridge between a wider audience and a musical world still too often labelled as ‘niche’. The musicians not only focus on the club and festival circuit, but have already written soundtracks for some short film projects and are also reaching out to the theatre world.
In its early years, VENTILATEUR was mainly known within the Flemish arts landscape on the Bruges-Ghent-Brussels axis. A soundtrack for Happiness and Hoofdplaat introduced VENTILATEUR to a new audience. Songs from the albums got airtime from Radio 1, Klara and other stations, and singles appeared in national playlists. The band’s music was also picked up by VRT, which used the single Nectar during several programs. In 2023, the band scored their biggest gig yet: Ghent Jazz on a podium curated by their label, W.E.R.F. Records.
VENTILATEUR as a project can count on the support of organisations such as W.E.R.F. Records, Cactus Music Centre, Het Entrepot and VI.BE. The band also has close ties with theatre companies such as Camping Sunset, Compagnie Cecilia and Ontroerend Goed and, of course, numerous connections within the Flemish and Brussels music scene.
Live:
29th January, CC HA, Hasselt (pre-release concert)
26th March, Cactus, Bruges
29th March, Jazzcats, Kortrijk
More dates tba